


Exhaustion and Blood

by AU_Ruler



Category: PKNA - Paperinik New Adventures
Genre: Blood, Exhaustion, Hiding Injuries, Ignoring an Injury, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mutual Pining, but trust me its there, explicit wound mention, its pretty lowkey, no.23, no.30, whumptober2020, wound reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27241312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AU_Ruler/pseuds/AU_Ruler
Summary: In which Donald tries to hide an injury from Uno
Relationships: Donald Duck/Uno | One (Disney: PKNA)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Exhaustion and Blood

Donald just barely kept himself from stumbling out of his car. If he did that Uno would scan him for sure. But if he just kept up pretenses he might be able to skip the scanner and escape to the bathroom. There he'd be able to take care of his wound.  _ Without _ Uno knowing about it.

Normally he'd be fine with his partner patching him up. But right now, well. The wound wasn't  _ great _ ; it wasn't anything he couldn't handle, but Donald could tell it wasn't ‘just a scratch’ either. It also wasn't the first not great wound he'd gotten recently. The lack of sleep apparently had started to get to him. Which was a lecture he'd very much like to skip.

So he walked as straight and normal as he could. His belt sat higher on his waist than usual. It was also tighter than usual. Doing double duty of hiding the wound and keeping pressure on it. Along with that, he walked so his back didn't face Uno’s orb. Because he’d been shot right as he'd been turning and took the blast to the back at his side. There was no doubt in his mind his cape was tinted red. So far it was going well. Uno gave him an odd look, but he was able to give a smile and wave it off. Luckily he’d gone numb half an hour ago, so the pain wasn’t really a factor anymore. All he had to do was make it into the elevator, to the hallway, and into the bathroom. He was almost there, Uno opened the door for him.

“Thanks, Uno,” Donald mumbled with another tired smile. There were cameras in the elevator, but if he was careful it should be okay. Then his Donald Duck luck decided to rear its ugly head. His feet stuttered as he backed into the elevator. He caught himself on the doorframe.

“Donald?” Uno asked, a hint of concern in his voice.

“‘M fine,” Donald said and removed his hand from the elevator to wave away his concern.

Then he was tipping. Tipping back and back and back into the elevator. If his back hit the metal floor, he wasn’t aware of it.

Uno watched as his partner fell almost in slow motion before he hit the elevator’s floor with a sudden clang. The AI scrambled toward him. His hands trambled as he reached out to lift Donald. Before he could touch him, Uno spotted the metal of his arms. He forced himself to pause. If he wasn’t careful he could hurt Donald, he was only a biological after all. Compared to the metal arms, Donald was fragile and frail. Two words he wouldn’t normally use to describe his friend. Once he’d calmed- and that wasn’t right, AIs weren’t supposed to feel frantic and scared and  _ useless _ , especially ones as sophisticated as him. of course that hadn’t stopped him in the years since meeting Paperinik- he carefully picked Donald up. His friend was limp in his hands, but Uno could feel his heartbeat through the metal. It wasn’t as strong as he’d like. But it wasn’t dangerously weak.

He set him down on the bed as it rose from the floor. Donald’s cape hung over the side of the bed. There was a rather large spot of red on the fabric. It almost looked like a flower. No doubt Donald had used it to stem the blood flow. Uno turned him gently on his front. When he moved the cape to the side, he winced. There was a wound cut into his side like someone took a cleaver and removed a chunk of flesh. Or, perhaps, like Donald had been struck in the side by a rudimentary blaster. The wound still bled sluggishly. With a sigh Uno grabbed the tools he needed.

As he washed, stitched, and bandaged Donald’s wound, his friend didn’t flinch. It was good that he was finally getting some sleep. That didn’t stem the worry. Uno knew that if Donald only slept the rate which he was getting wounds would diminish.  _ Significantly _ . But he was stubborn. The most stubborn man Uno had ever met, in fact. Donald’s heartbeat began to pick up as Uno worked on the more minor injuries. He was in the middle of tending to Donald’s black eye when the vitals picked up enough that Uno backed away.

Donald jolted awake only to hiss as pain bloomed vibrantly along his back and side. Even with his eyes clenched shut he could see the green glow of Uno’s orb. Or maybe it was just instinct. “Old cape,” Uno’s voice said right by his ear. Weary concern in his tone. Donald groaned and opened his eyes.

“Hey.” Donald attempted a joking tone, but he suspected the hoarseness of his voice made it fall flat. Especially with the way Uno gave him a blank stare. A  _ disappointed _ blank stare. Like he was his disappointed wife. The thought sent embarrassed warmth through him, tingling at his cheeks.

“So what was your plan? Slink off to the bathroom and sew yourself up?” Uno asked. Metal arms crossed in front of his orb and Donald knew it was less for necessity and more for extra affect.

“You know me,” Donald shrugged and slowly sat up. He put a hand over the bandage wrapped tight around his midriff. The wound smarted, but not as badly as it probably could have. Especially if he'd sewn himself up. Not with the way sleep still pulled at him from the recesses of his mind. Even so he wished he didn’t have to make Uno patch him up once again. It was fine normally, but Uno had had to do it so much this week and every wound seemed to make the AI worry more. “Didn’t want to make you worry,” Donald added much more sincerely.

Uno scoffed and a metal hand moved to mess with the black eye he could feel forming. “By passing out in my elevator.”

“I meant to make it to the bathroom,” Donald grumbled.

“You know, you wouldn’t get hurt so much if you actually slept once in a while,” Uno said. The hand moved from his eye to a cut on his bill. Another hand came to tilt Donald’s face up.

“I don’t need to sleep,” Donald argued.

The hands at his bill stopped abruptly. All of the sudden the one that’d tilted his face up yanked it back down and Uno was looking him in the eyes with an intense look that made fear shoot through Donald in a way even the Evronians couldn’t match.

“Donald Duck, you have been getting sloppier and sloppier lately. You can’t afford to die. Why must you insist on not sleeping?” Uno asked him.

“I don't have the time.” Donald waved him off, pulling his bill from his grip. Uno huffed and motioned for Donald to give it back so he could finish disinfecting the cut. Once Donald did as asked, Uno took no small satisfaction in Donald’s small hiss as the peroxide hit the cut. “Between the triplets and Paperinik, sleep isn't important.”

“Sleep is always important. Especially if it keeps you from getting hurt by something you really should have been able to dodge.” A finger pointedly poked at the bandages around Donald’s waist. Not on the wound, but close enough to make a point.

Donald grunted. It was obvious he didn't exactly agree. Being able to help Duckburg from its crime was important to him. Just as important as raising the triplets since his sister’s disappearance. Always so ready and willing to give all of himself for others. Never concerned with the negative impact it could have on his own being. Uno clicked a digital tongue.

“Maybe if you got one of your cousins to help,” Uno suggested.

“No,” Donald said. “Fethry’s busy and Gladstone-”

“From what I've seen of Gladstone he already loves the triplets,” Uno interrupted him. Donald gave Uno a look, but Uno didn’t back down. “He would help you if you’d only ask and you know it.”

Before Donald could respond, Uno got a weird faraway look in his eyes. Then he smiled. “Actually, I'd like to help too.” It was rare for Uno to turn bashful. There were only a handful of moments Donald could really remember. Now was one of them. “If you'd let me.”

“Of course,” Donald answered without hesitation. “But you can't leave the tower.”

“Can't I?” Uno asked with a twinkle in his eye. Donald gave him a confused look and Uno chuckled. “I've been working on something for a while and it's almost perfect. Not quite what I wanted yet, but I think it'd be quite suited to help you raise three ducklings.”

“What is it?” Donald asked, the cryptic answer doing nothing to help his confusion.

“I've made a body,” Uno said proudly.

Slowly Donald blinked, eyes widening. “Wow! Really? That's incredible, Uno! But why'd you do that?”

“I don't want to spend the rest of my life in this stuffy tower,” Uno said. He moved up in his orb, nose up toward the air. Then he turned bashful again. Which Donald can't remember ever seeing twice in a day. “I also thought it would be nice to be able to go…  _ out _ with you. It's one thing to see Duckburg through its cameras. I imagine it's quite another to see it in the streets.”

“Oh.” Donald blushed as the implication of ‘like a date’ dawned on him. “A- alright.”

“I'm going to go retrieve it,” Uno said. The orb left as he went to wherever he'd hid his secret project. “You go call your cousin.”

“ _ Fine _ ,” Donald grumbled as he got up from the bed to grab the phone. In the room Uno was in, Odin smiled to himself.


End file.
